Although there have been a number of technological developments in the area of systems for making presentations to audiences such as overhead projectors, large screen televisions, electronic overhead projection systems for displaying computer data and video tape presentation systems, there has not been similar advances in the way that the audience can communicate with the speaker. Developments in this area have been limited to methods by which selected members of the audience can communicate with the speaker and the remainder of the audience by way of voice audio systems such as the Philips CCS 400 conference system. Systems such as these consist of chairman units, delegate units and roving microphones which provide participants of a meeting with increased and improved speech intelligibility through sound amplification and distribution. Conference participants have their own microphones and a roving microphone allows members of the audience to speak when selected by the chairman. This type of system, representative of similar units, does not allow for the collection of data or information from a large number of audience members.
Another type of system that is used to obtain information from an audience is the commonly known 800 or 900 telephone polling system. Typically, this system consists of a broadcast medium such as radio or television posing a question to its audience and then requesting a response by having members of the audience call one of several numbers associated with a proposed response. Although this type of system is capable of providing large amounts of data, it does not have any selectivity with regard to the audience participating in the survey and, indeed, is susceptible to single individuals calling in a multiple number of times. Further, this type of system is not practical for the typical presentation made to an audience in the usual business or educational setting.
Previous attempts to measure the effectiveness of a presentation were to gather information from participants and concentrated on written, after the event, questionnaires which proved to be somewhat ineffective. The use of questionnaires during a presentation improved the response quality, but were still considered to require excessive effort to obtain, analyze, and distribute the results.
A clear drawback of the above written response approach, is that it does not provide fresh and immediate responses from the audience, nor does it provide the ability to present the results immediately.
Known in the art are hard-wired, one direction, response devices which allow an audience to provide a "yes" or "no" response to a question.
Other systems employing personal computers in a local area network have been used to record findings for group presentations, but required a system that was uniquely designed for the event and the location, and substantial expertise to preplan and apply the collected data. The size and weight of personal computers and the requirement that they be hard-wired into a local area network further limits their use in the traditional setting of a speaker and his audience.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system that allows a speaker to pose a question to an audience and request a response which the audience can provide by a simple physical input to a device in their possession that registers on a station near the speaker and receives such responses and presents the data in a statistically understandable form.
Another object of the invention is to allow the speaker to adjust his presentation and respond to audience interest while giving the presentation.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system where the devices used by the audience are uniquely coded with the identity, or characteristics, of the individuals possessing the devices.
It is another object of the invention to be able to have dossiers of the audience in the station located near the speaker to provide not only statistical analyses of the responses, but a correlation with the identities or characteristics of the respondents.
It is another object of the invention to provide a system wherein the station located near the presenter is able to quickly interrogate each of the units in the possession of the audience in order to receive the data in a organized and coherent manner by having the modules in the possession of the audience transmit to the station only when instructed to do so by the station.